Why Lomita wants to eliminate parking on Pacific Coast Highway

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The city of Lomita has formally requested CalTrans ban parking on the busy stretch of Pacific Coast Highway through the city. Both Torrance to the south and Los Angeles to the north have three lanes of traffic in each direction, while Lomita has only two because parking is allowed on one lane and that causes a traffic bottleneck, although parking is banned during rush hours (after 3 p.m.) Lomita February 6, 2018. Photo by Brittany Murray, Daily Breeze/SCNG

The city of Lomita has formally notified the state Department of Transportation it favors eliminating on-street parking on the milelong stretch of busy Pacific Coast Highway that threads through the community in a bid to reduce traffic congestion .

“We definitely do get bottlenecks in that whole area,” City Manager Ryan Smoot said. “The overarching goal is to improve traffic flow through the city.”

The bottleneck is created because immediately to the east and west in the Harbor Area and Torrance respectively — PCH is not oriented in a north-south direction through the city of Lomita — curb parking is largely prohibited and traffic uses all three lanes, although parking is prohibited during morning and evening rush hours. But in Lomita, traffic is largely restricted to two lanes outside of rush hour.

That loss of a lane squeezes the more than 63,000 vehicles that use the state highway daily into two lanes rather than three, clogging up intersections.

Indeed, a preliminary analysis of the highway traffic on the stretch through Lomita shows that removing the on-street parking will improve traffic flow, city officials said.

For example, between Western and Pennsylvania avenues traffic currently flows at a level of service of F and E. An E level of service is defined as an unstable flow, at capacity, while LOS F — the worse state of congestion on the scale — indicates a constant traffic jam.

But remove the parking and the LOS is now E or D for all westbound traffic and evening eastbound traffic; eastbound morning roadway traffic flow would remain unchanged. LOS D isn’t free flow, but it does represent an improvement.

Still, the reduction in congestion on the road would be erased by 2030, projections show anyway, as the number of vehicles using the road rises steadily, with or without the removal of on-street parking.

Smoot said complaints from residents about congestion on PCH caused by the on-street parking have occurred repeatedly. But, when the proposal first came before the City Council in 2015, of the six responses the city received from the public, four were opposed to the loss of parking on the city’s major commercial thoroughfare, officials noted.

But Caltrans has also said a 10 percent to 20 percent reduction in vehicle accidents is expected if parking is eliminated, city officials said.

In any event, the city’s formal written request will trigger further study by Caltrans before any changes are made.

Lomita would also bear the cost of replacing road signs and restriping the road. It’s not yet known how much that would cost.

Veteran journalist Nick Green is the beat reporter for the cities of Torrance, Carson and Lomita and also covers the South Bay's rapidly growing craft beer industry for the Daily Breeze. He has worked for newspapers on the West Coast since graduating in 1987 from the University of Washington and lives in Old Torrance with his wife and two cats. Follow him on Twitter @NickGreen007 and @BeerGogglesLA.